Cheetahs come of age

 

Zimbabwe won the pre-qualifier tournament in Asia, that served as a grading platform for the Tier II Sevens teams that will battle for core membership in May, where they will also take on the bottom three of the current core teams for promotion and relegation.

“The unique thing about this tournament is that it has brought to us the realisation that we are able to compete at such high levels of the game if we have self belief and self motivation because that is what drove us over the weekend,” said Leitao.
“I am sure the way we played at the weekend just shows the potential we have as the Cheetahs and I strongly believe that if we maintain this we should see more upsets of this nature in the future.

“But it’s a really good feeling winning this tournament, it shows that we can play at such a competitive level, and despite losing to Russia in the last group game, where we were off, we managed to pull ourselves together and beat them in the semi-final.

“We started Day Three on a good note where we beat Brazil in the quarter–final so with momentum on our side we could not let that chance go.”
The home-based Cheetahs contingent arrived back yesterday afternoon and were welcomed by song dance from primary school players from the Mabvuku Rugby Legacy programme.

Most of the foreign-based players, who include France-based Garth Zeigler and the duo of Njabulo Ndlovu and Tafadzwa Chitokwindo, remained in South Africa.
The win means that together with Russia, Georgia and runners-up Tonga, Zimbabwe will compete for three available core team places on the 2013/14 HSBC Sevens World Series with Asian champions Hong Kong and the core teams ranked 13th, 14th and 15th after round 8 — the Emirates Airline Glasgow Sevens.

It was a good outing for the Cheetahs given that they went into the tournament ranked below Russia, Japan, Georgia and Tonga but they pulled a classic performance only to suffer one defeat, falling prey to Russia in the final Group G game.
But the Cheetahs turned on the heat to put up a good performance that saw them come back to beat the Russians 19-5 in the semi-final, setting up a final berth against highly fancied Tonga, who they overpowered 21-19 in a closely-fought battle.

Forward Fortunate Chipendu justified why coach Gilbert “Gidza” Nyamutsamba included him in the side, despite an out-of-sorts performance in the Spar Zimbabwe International Sevens tournament just a week earlier. Chipendu turned on a beautiful performance, to the extent of putting beautiful and very accurate cross kicks, in a huge turnaround in his game from his performance two weeks earlier, on home soil.

“Losing to Russia was mainly due to our own mistakes, we did not get much of the ball and without the ball there was very little we could do,” said Leitao.
“We knew there was a chance that we could meet them in the later stages of the tournament so that evening we had a video analysis of how we had played and how they had also played.

“When we met them in the semi-final, we stuck to the game plan, we communicated more and made sure we starved them of the ball and that worked for us.”
Chipendu also took time to talk about how he managed to transform his game between the Spar tournament and Hong Kong tourney.

“In the Spar tournament I was not up to the game but there were big changes in between (during the training camp) but it goes down to the game plan which I am happy that we managed to stick to because this is a team sport and we can’t have each one of us playing their own game,” said Chipendu.

“Every tournament is different, so is each game, and the same goes for the game plans.”
Chipendu is also a Sables lock.
Team manager and former Zimbabwe Rugby Union president, Bruce Hobson, believes their win in Hong Kong will have a huge impact on how they will prepare for the final qualifier in the United Kingdom in two months time and the Moscow World Cup in June. These are the two main tournaments the Cheetahs will take part in this year and qualifying for core membership is key as well as playing well at the World Cup in two months time.
Hobson feels they have the momentum to go on.

“We are really elated as we went into the tournament ranked below several teams that included Japan, Russia and Georgia but we managed to bring the trophy home and we were fortunate enough to make the Cook Islands look ordinary.

“Obviously, we were so disappointed that we lost to Russia in the pool game and the reaction and the looks on the boys’ faces, one could easily tell they knew we could have won that game.
“But it was fortunate for us that we were technically superior on Day Three.

“So many teams and spectators wanted us to do well, including South Africa, who unfortunately did not do well, and they were so happy for us when we came out tops in our pre-qualifier,” said the former Zimbabwe Under-23 manager.
The Cheetahs will take a break for the rest of this week before the locally-based players can re-group to continue with their preparations for the London Sevens and World Cup tournaments.

They will also take part in the Mombasa Sevens in Kenya at the end of April.